by Tiana Laveen
“Okay fine, now you know. You happy?” Saint hollered, snatching his laptop out of the case and placing it on his desk. He popped the damn thing open, wishing the entire world would just go taciturn for the rest of the blasted day.
“No, neither of us is happy about this!” Lawrence exclaimed. “Saint, I can only imagine how helpless you feel. Here you are, a sex therapist, having a major crisis in your love life that is neither you nor your wife’s fault. To add insult to injury, you discovered that she does, in fact, have desire, just not with you. That would be devastating for even the strongest of men.”
“You know about that, too?!”
“Well.” Lawrence shrugged. “Traci called Donna and—”
“Jesus Christ!” He looked for something to throw, but now two pens were on the ground and he sure as hell wasn’t going to toss his MacBook against the wall. “Loose mothafuckin’ lips! Word spreads faster amongst you all quicker than a roadrunner and cheetah racing towards a finish line. Normally, I would encourage her to confide in a friend if she didn’t feel she could with me, but this has to stop. I have to tell Xenia to discontinue talking to Traci about our personal matters; it’s obviously too much responsibility! Why does your wife talk so fucking much?!”
“She does not! She was concerned!”
“Bull! She wanted to gossip, and that’s one thing that can’t be blamed on the baby. That woman has got the biggest mouth in the entire fuckin’ 212 area code! I wouldn’t bet a dime on her to be able to zip it for just one damn second!”
“Don’t talk about my wife again, man!” Jagger pointed at him, his brows dipped as his ice blue eyes turned bright orange. “That is my final warning to you, Saint.”
“Oh, shut the hell up! If Traci got paid to gossip, you’d be billionaires! I know you’re gettin’ a real kick out of this, Jagger! A part of you enjoys it when I’m down on my luck. You’re always tryna compete with me, one-up-man type bullfuckery and other seedy, sneaky shit!” Saint found an ass-shaped tape dispenser hiding partially behind his computer and hauled it, too.
“You are completely delusional, you egotistical son of a bitch!”
“You can’t even spell delusional and egotistical you fucking dickhead, you muscle-necked imbecile, so why in hell are you even sayin’ the words?!” Saint belted.
“I can spell jackass though.” Jagger grinned as his eyes continued to change colors. “… But why should I have to, when I can just point at one?!” he roared, pointing an accusing finger in Saint’s direction. “And I may not have a fancy degree like yourself, Saint, but at least I’m not coming in here all bent out of shape, acting like a jerk to everyone because I haven’t had sex in a while and for me to one up you it would mean that I actually give a fuck! I was tryna be nice, tell you that I understood why you’ve been so bent out of sorts but just for this, I hope you don’t get laid for at least a whole ’nother two months, maybe longer!”
“And I hope a big ass flying saucer comes from outer space and crashes on top of you. Flattening you like a damn IHop pancake!”
“Would you two stop it?!” Lawrence screamed.
“…And then I hope it backs up, goes in reverse and crashes on you again and again…and again after that. It would be the only time you were actually close to intelligence.” Saint muttered, determined to get in the last word.
“Jesus Christ! You two are like children right now! Enough! … Look, Jagger, pull your head out of your ass, can’t you see the man is suffering here?” He pointed in Saint’s direction. “And how would you like it if Saint and I knew the intimate details of your sex life, and you hadn’t told us? Of course he’d be angry! I knew of the situation but not all of these details until a little while ago… It’s terrible, now both of you just calm down. You’re friends, just stop it.”
Everyone went quiet for a long while, trying to get control of themselves.
“Now.” Lawrence said in an even tone after some time, breaking the thick tension in the room. “Saint, since we both know, and it’s out in the open, before we discuss this new case, would you like to talk to us? I mean, there is no point in keeping tight-lipped anymore.”
Saint huffed, picked up the remote to his music system and hit play. Mya came on singing, “My Love Is Like Whoa.”
His head dropped and he closed his eyes while the gritty clutches of days passed encompassed him. A wave of shame drifted over his heart and bittersweet memories swirled inside his skull, etching flashes of a naked woman he’d run to the ends of heaven and hell for—all she had to do was say the fucking word. One late evening, several years ago, Xenia had danced to this very song for him before she fucked the life out of him…leaving him almost spent…
Damn! I want my baby back!
“Okay guys, besides Raphael, you two are like my brothers. We fight, we argue, we love one another…so here it is. Xenia has gone completely crazy, man.” He sighed and massaged between his eyes, fighting another sinus headache that threatened to hit. “I told her about some shit that happened at a museum, and ever since then, she has been blowing my damn phone up.” He opened his eyes, rolled them and looked listlessly towards a side window.
“…We noticed.” Jagger smirked. “She’s calling like every twenty minutes. I was hoping that was a good sign, actually.”
“No, it’s not.” Saint shook his head.
“How did this begin, like, what happened at the museum?” Lawrence questioned. Five minutes later, Saint had given the play by play, only to be met with wide-open mouths. Then the two men looked at each other and yelled simultaneously,
“Why did you tell her that?!”
“Awwww, man!” Saint spun around in his chair, knowing he was about to get a lecture. Hell, he regretted the shit now, too…but it was done! What could he do? “I was tryna be honest, guys! Full disclosure! You know, open lines of communication ’nd shit…” He scratched behind his neck, feeling nervous. “I didn’t do anything and if I had, I would have told her that, too. I felt guilty all the same. I just wanted to be truthful with her, you know?” Saint shrugged.
“…And here you accused me of being an imbecile. I woulda known not to tell Traci some shit like this!” Jagger burst out laughing.
“Jagger, shut up.” Lawrence chided then turned back towards Saint.
“Oh God, look, Saint, I can’t believe that I have to give the Don Juan of our group marital advice, but it seems that I do. Never, ever, ever, ever tell your wife when you are sexually attracted to another woman!”
“Have you ever been?” Saint asked Lawrence, a smile budding across his face.
“Of course I have been! And Donna will never know about it, especially because I want to stay alive, if that’s all right with you. I kinda like this living thing, breathing and taking in air, you know?” He chuckled.
“What about you, Jagger? You ever see something hot and tempting and think, ‘Damn, I’d like to give that a test drive?’”
“No,” the man said emphatically.
“You liar!” Lawrence roared. “Yes he did, Saint.” Lawrence tattled on the man, right then and there, which fueled Saint’s fire, made him a little less edgy. “I was with him when it happened. Traci and Jagger had had an argument. This was back in L.A., and—”
“Alright alright!” Jagger protested, waving his hands around. “Yes, it happened, okay?! But I never would have done anything about it.”
“Exactly, and neither would Saint.”
Lawrence obviously felt somewhat vindicated and Saint would have found the entire scene amusing had he not been suffering from a severe case of blue balls.
“No, even if she was game, I would not have gone through with it, just like I said. I’m being totally honest about that. What bothered me was the split second that I thought about it… I wasn’t sure, ’cause, you know, my mind was kind of messed up. But as the night unfolded, I saw my outcome, like walking five steps ahead of myself. No, I would have stayed true to my wife, but that still didn’t cure all the guilt.
It was terrible.” He shook his head as he reflected over the entire ordeal. “It was like someone said, ‘Let’s fuck with Saint tonight and create a woman almost as beautiful as Xenia, drop her in front of him, and let her have a good heart, too.’ From that standpoint, it was horrendous. She was the kind of woman that, had I been single, I could have possibly pursued, and I rarely run into women that are anywhere near Xenia’s level. That moment of contemplation lasted less than sixty seconds, but those sixty seconds will haunt me the rest of my life.”
“Don’t. Let it go,” Jagger spoke up. “You can’t do that to yourself, beat yourself up about it. You were tempted because you felt rejected by your wife. It’s not like you had a good thing goin’ at home and went out and messed up. You still were noble, Saint, and that’s what matters. You fought, you won. No clothes came off. No kisses were exchanged.”
Lawrence nodded in agreement. Before Saint could respond, Jagger’s eye gleamed with mischievousness.
“What she look like?” Jagger slicked his tongue over his lower lip, leaving a sheen. Saint wanted to reach across the desk and choke the fuck out him.
“What the hell does it matter what she looked like, Jagger?!” Lawrence barked.
“Well, shit.” Jagger grinned and threw up his hands. “I was just curious! It’s not a crime, you know!”
“I think it’s safe to say that she was pretty nice looking and just leave it at that. The bigger issue here is that Xenia is a wreck. What are you going to do about her?” Lawrence inquired as he turned back towards Saint, bringing the conversation back on track.
“I keep trying to prove to this woman that she’s got me.” He patted his shirt right above his beating heart. “…That I’m not going any damn where.” Saint sighed in frustration. “But it’s like it’s going in one ear and out the other. She doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw me. It didn’t help when the paintings arrived…”
“Huh?” Jagger’s brow shot up.
“You know, the paintings I bought of the woman’s, like I explained.”
Jagger shook his head in disbelief. “Maaaaan! Saint, you really dug yourself a hole.”
“…And then I even told Xenia that I gave the woman extra money, for her rent and groceries.”
“You did WHAT?!” both men said in unison, their eyes glowing and a look of utter incredulity etched into their faces.
“I know, I know!” Saint tipped back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling as if to say, ‘Why have you forsaken me, Oh Lord?’
“At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. She helped me that night, man. It ended up being a beautiful exchange! You guys should see this tree couple painting, I mean seriously. It gives me so much strength.”
Saint maneuvered his phone out of his pocket and looked down at it.
“Damn.” He ran his hand leisurely over his lips. “Three more missed calls from Xenia…looks like I gotta voicemail here, too. Fuck…let me go ahead and play this back.”
Both men nodded and began to talk about the new case amongst themselves as Saint rose from his seat and walked to the far right corner of his office, trying to gain a bit of privacy. As he listened to the message, he couldn’t believe his ears.
“Yo! Lawrence!” he screamed out as he ended the playback and rejoined the group. “I am wishing on a star you can help me here! I’ve got a theory about this whole sexless situation.”
“By all means, run it past me.”
“Initially, though I didn’t tell you, I felt like Koki was involved in this. I didn’t say anything to you because once I asked Xenia if she’d seen him and she told me she hadn’t, so that pretty much flushed my theory down the toilet. I felt like I had nothing else to hold onto regarding that rationale. Well, guess what? The day this shit first started, some big guy ran into her after work, almost knocking her down. I bet he’s got something to do with this!”
“Well Saint, come on. That’s kind of a shot in the dark,” Jagger interjected.
“Not really,” Lawrence interrupted, raising his hand in the air, “Do you by chance know where he ran into her?”
“Yes.” Saint clenched his teeth. “He ran into her ass, she said.”
“I bet he touched her lower vertebrae…” Lawrence drifted away in thought, slumping into his seat as he ran his fingertips along his chin. “Saint, he may have put a hex on her, a very common one, but powerful. It doesn’t work on us Angel Children, and attempting to get close enough to touch you without detecting them would have been far more risky. Once he realized your wife was a civilian, he may have felt that was his way inside, his way to get close to you. Yes, this could really make sense… They direct their energies towards our weaknesses. Koki was smart enough to realize that if he could get you in a weakened state, he’d have an advantage. The man who ran into her must’ve been what we call a ‘Love Jones’ Demon Child.”
“What’s that?” Jagger inquired, now hanging onto Lawrence’s every word. “This one is new to me.”
“From the urgency in Saint’s movements and energy, we don’t have time for me to get into a long and deep discussion regarding Demon Children. It could take hours. They are very complicated people, but basically, there are different types of Demon Children, Jagger.”
“Well, I already understood that part, Lawrence. I just have never heard of a ‘Love Jones’ one though.”
“It’s just a nickname said amongst ourselves. The Latin term for this is, Amor est daemon meus, which means, ‘Love is my Demon.’ It is based on the principle of the seven deadly sins. It turns the object of your desire into someone that literally repulses you. The one in question is more than likely a Demon Child that puts a curse on someone based on his or her romantic affiliations. They basically touch the lower vertebrae of the person with their right hand, and say, ‘May you lose all desire for your one true love.’ That is a very rough translation, so don’t quote me on it, but that’s the gist of it. As Saint is well aware, our bottommost chakra, the Muladhara, is located in our lower backs. I am compelled to believe that you were right the whole time, Saint. This wasn’t some coincidence.
“There are seven chakras, seven days of the week, seven deadly sins…” Saint muttered as he paced back and forth like a caged panther, gathering his thoughts. “Un-fucking believable!” Saint wanted to tear something up, but at the same damn time, he had a sense of relief. “Okay, what do we do now, Lawrence? How do I get my woman back?!”
“Well, that’s the tricky part, Saint. There isn’t a short answer, per se.” He winced as his shoulders slumped a bit, trounced before the game even began.
“Tricky part? I don’t give a shit if it’s an entire year long magic show. How do we stop this?! Make it right? I can’t take one more day of this. Not one more!”
“Okay Saint, I need you to calm down.” Lawrence stood from his seat. “We have to go about this in the right way, to ensure that we can take care of it.” Raising his hands, he slowly approached Saint, as if a riled up serpent had landed in the room, and everyone’s safety was at stake. “We can’t have you tracking Koki down and beating on him like you want to; no, we need to be methodical about this.”
“It is tearing my marriage apart.” Saint backed himself into a wall and covered his eyes with his sweaty palms for a brief spell. He’d become winded and an internal inferno, burned within, marinating with a bloody taste for revenge. “Xenia even brought up letting me leave if we didn’t find a solution soon, man. Now you know I can’t let that woman go… Over my dead body!” he rasped, gripping his shirt into a tight ball. “She said she’d rather me get what I need than hold me back…you all have no fucking idea the shit going on in my house right now. It’s been awful!” His voice shook. “That’s the type of woman I’m married to—selfless, but she doesn’t get that if she’s gone, I may as well be dead, so what would be the use in her leavin’, huh?”
“Oh man…” Jagger’s eyes turned dark sapphire—nothing but pure sympathy. “Saint, I’m so sorry, man…but a
t least we know now what’s going on. You know we will do whatever is necessary to help you get this straightened out.”
“Lawrence, what do we need to do to help Saint?”
“Frankly?”
“No, un-frankly…yes, damn it! How else would I want you to be?!” Saint screamed at him. He was a loose canyon and the lack of intimacy from his Queen, paired with this new revelation, made every muscle inside his temple jump. “I’m sorry Lawrence, I’m losing it… Go ahead, please.”
“Alright. I’ll just say it. Saint, Xenia will have to kill the man who did this.” Lawrence sat back down, slumped in his seat, and stared aimlessly at the ground.
“I must’ve misheard you.” Saint blinked hard a few times, as if someone had cold-cocked him from the side.
“No, you heard me just fine. That’s the only way to break this sort of curse.”
“Oh, for the love of God! She can’t do that, Lawrence! I can though, and happily!” He narrowed his eyes. “No, we need a second opinion. There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way, Saint. We’d have to find him for her and arrange it. The one good thing about this is that, once the curse is removed, it can never be placed on her again, by anyone. Now Saint, you can be there, you can help her, but she has to be the one to do it.”
“Oh, fuck! Uh uh! I can’t believe this.” Saint gulped and walked to his desk, flopping down in the leather chair like a sack of uncooked rice. “Can’t you call someone, find out about some provision at least? I just can’t ask her to—”
“The only way! I am certain about this. Now, do you want me to tell her? You don’t appear to be in a position to disclose such details.”
“No, no.” Saint shook his head and exhaled. “I’ll call her.” He removed his phone from his pocket once more and stared at it, as if he weren’t sure how to work the contraption.